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Hey, guys! As you may have read in my earlier post, I’ve dropped Diablo 3 as my main RPG and started playing Rift instead. For the few of you reading my blog that may also play Rift, you’ve probably been keen on the new game patch: the wardrobe update.

When I first heard about this patch, it didn’t seem like much. Some new clothing looks, another menu for clothes. [I’ll admit, I didn’t go too far into the research.] Sure, I thought it would be cool, but I didn’t expect it would be anything big.

When the patch came out and I got to play it for the first time, I thought it was stupid. The dye merchants in Sanctum and Meridian were gone, replaced by an in-game dye menu. You had to pay credits to get the nice colors. I learned, slowly, that apothecary dyes still worked, and the colors in the menu were nice, anyway. It still seemed pretty pointless. Now you could have two sets of clothing. It didn’t make much sense to have two wardrobe options; why not just wear the best armor you owned at all times? I put all my normal clothes in my wardrobe slot. It felt pretty much the same, albeit with nicer colors.

Then I realized that wasn’t what the update was, and I started to like it more. Now, easy as pie, you could make your character look like he or she was wearing whatever you wanted him or her to. You could even wear something that your class couldn’t normally use – while still retaining the stats of the armor you were really wearing. This worked better than ever at the time, right after I’d picked up a piece of chest armor that had good stats but was ridiculously immodest. [Yeah, sorry, my rant about inappropriate/impractical womens’ RPG outfits will come later.]

In my opinion, this is especially useful for mages and warriors, whose clothing options aren’t exactly pleasing [to me, anyway.] Mages’ robes usually look like they’re wearing bathrobes, especially the lower-level ones; the warriors sometimes look like they’re wearing metal swimsuits. Not exactly advisable if you’re going into battle. Even the weapons are customizable – if you’re tired of your boring dagger or dull staff, exchange it for a swaggy sword that you’d never be able to use anyway!

The wardrobes can be accessed via the character page [press C]. Click on the wardrobe tab on the left side and tinker with your appearance to your heart’s content!

Maybe later I’ll post a picture of my character’s wardrobe, if anyone wants to see it.

Hey, guys!! Oh my goodness… it’s been SO LONG since I’ve posted anything on TFG!!! I have SO much to talk about, and I don’t know if you want to read it all, but here it is anyway.

I got back on Animal Jam for the first time in, like, a year. A whole lot has changed – too much for me. {2much4me.} My friend wanted his account back, but it still had most of my stuff on it, so I’m pretty bummed about that. I’m still a non-member, which I don’t really care about, but it irritates me that it’s such a pay-to-win game.

Speaking of pay-to-win games, I kind of dropped Diablo III. Actually, it got accidentally deleted when we were cleaning out the computer. Instead, I started playing another RPG instead, and this one’s free: RIFT. It’s not exactly new; I played it back in 2011 when it was fresh out of beta, but at $15 a month it was WAY too expensive to play for long. The good news is, it’s now free to play, except for a couple optional in-game purchases to get more currency, objects, etc. I’ve already played to level 38.

I owned a Minecraft server for about three months, but it got a bit boring, so it’s getting closed. It’s difficult to do anything other than vanilla, and I didn’t really know how to code, so I just played vanilla survival with Amber, Celestia, and a couple people on Planet Minecraft.

Speaking of Planet Minecraft, I got a name change, got to level 45, and rose quite a bit in the popularity scale. My skins have improved a TON.

Well, I guess that’s about it. Thanks for reading my long string of nothingness!

Like this:

Hey, guys! My cousin who plays most games with me – Animal Jam, Minecraft, and Diablo III – has finally started a blog. This is the friend whose AJ character inspired Flora Cottoncloud. Yes, the three main characters are actual people. Juniper Spiritbird is mine.
Anyway, please check out her blog. It’s very new, but she’s posting like crazy. The web address is http://florascafe.wordpress.com/ Please take the time to look at this, it would mean a lot to her!!

Hey guys!! I have been noticing that you all have been having problems with the Animal Jam Adventures, particularly the Forgotten Desert, and I have compiled this guide to help you.

~The Return of the Phantoms~
This is the first and easiest adventure. On easy mode, you have to find 3 corks, water 8 plants, and find 4 keys. On hard mode, you have to find 5 corks, water 12 plants, and find 4 keys. I much prefer hard mode, and do it often for the rares.
The corks are fairly easy to find – keep an eye on your map for hints of areas. The keys are slighty harder; you sometimes have to go to the extremes of the map to find them.
There are quite a few money chests in the game. The hardest one to find is right at the beginning: as you’re walking out of the area where you talk to Liza, keep to the right of the passage and you should find a partially obscured tunnel that leads to a clearing with a chest.
There is a myth that if you rescue the rabbits in the order Snowball, Daisy, Jack, then Oliver, you will have a higher chance of getting rares. While it has been proven that opening the arctic wolves only hatch right behind the Phantom Gate, I have not yet tested this one. The best rare I’ve ever gotten from this adventure is a rare bow.

~The Phantom Portal~
This is, in my opinion, the hardest adventure. The keys are absolutely infuriating to find on hard mode. There are 4 corks, 4 keys, and 3 portal stones. On easy mode, just follow the pathways to find all four keys. In hard mode, it takes a bit of experimenting.
The portal stones are fairly easy to find; just watch your map to make sure you’ve gone down every slide and ladder. Bringing them back up is the tricky part. The key to this adventure is memorizing the landforms.
The corks are a snap. Just look for tall grass.
The best rare I’ve ever gotten from this adventure is a portal stone, since I hate doing it on hard. I know, it’s pretty lame, but it’s just me.

~Meet Cosmo~
This adventure came out only a few days after my first membership ran out. Ugh, what a pain. When the adventure was first released, there were actually three caverns – one in between the existing ones where you had to find corks to make it passable. I personally liked this one better, but to each his own, I guess.
Anyway, this adventure starts out pretty easy – just find the crops. The carrots are in the bottom left. They’re probably the hardest to find.
I like the riddles about the crops, since they make you think. Memorizing the nightingale’s song was also fun.
In this adventure, you are trying to find 2 keys to rescue 2 koalas hidden in caverns. This is the adventure in which the boomseeds are introduced, which are a key weapon in the following adventures. The hardest thing about this adventure is the phantom sprouters, which are a slightly less friendly introduction.
There are corks hidden around the map, but these are arbitrary. Your main task is to get to the caverns and rescue the koalas. The corks are just there to give you XP, or courage, and often lead to money chests.
I honestly don’t remember the rarest thing I’ve ever gotten from this adventure. Probably the wall garden, which isn’t even that rare. It just looks cool.

~The Hive~
This adventure was like a birthday present for me. Unfortunately I had to get on Amber’s account to receive it. I was going nuts in my room on the phone with her until she was finished with the adventure and let me do it.
Easy mode is fairly difficult, since it’s a pretty advanced adventure, but hard mode is just that – hard. There are two crystals hidden toward the bottom of the map in easy, and in hard, there’s an elephants-only hatch and a crystal hidden near the very top.
Amber absolutely loves killing the Phantom King. I personally think of it as an XP-farming thing, but she reminds me of Lucky from the AJ Story: screaming and pretending to hit the computer screen and laughing like a maniac every time she blew him up.
I’m glad the torches last for as many uses as you need. It would be a real pain otherwise. It stinks that the lava crystal’s can’t light the fire drums, but I guess it would be too easy otherwise.
The rarest thing I’ve ever got from this adventure was a patch of luminescent mushrooms. I think Return of the Phantoms is the only one where you get rares if you do it on hard mode.

~The Great Escape~
This one is the best adventure of the past five. I love the real warrior’s theme, sneaking inside the phantom tower and making a heroic escape. It makes me feel so cool.
Unlocking the monkeys is very simple, since all 5 keys are in the same place. There are 3 chambers that have treasure inside, but luckily they also contain replacement keys or the adventure is done for. Hopping on the Mira emblem has happened once already, but it’s sort of nice that even the phantoms respect the Sky-queen.
Floor 1 is by far the easiest – just a few quick mirror turns. I really like the logic involved in the mirror puzzles. Amber hates them, but again, she’s a Lucky all the way. Floor 2 is pretty much the same. Floors 3 and 4 never seem to stick in my mind as to what they are, but floor 5, the one with lots of phantom searchers, especially on hard mode, where pod-breaking lag can be fatal. Floor 6 is really fun, and Floor 7 is really a good battle.
I was very pleased with Greely’s important role in the adventures, and this one was no exception. Greely is awesome. ‘Nuff said.
Since I had been practicing Wind Rider with Amber, the end of this adventure was very fun. It was way longer than the original game, which can be found at the top right corner of Sarepia Forest, but every gem counted as 4 gems, which was totally worth it.
The rarest item I’ve ever gotten from this adventure was a turning mirror. Funny, I’d always wondered how they got those things.

~Greely’s Inferno~Easily the best adventure out there. Put simply, I love it. If I get a choice between this one and The Search for Greely, chances of rares taken into account, I’d pick this one every time.
The scenery at the beginning is cool. I’d never seen a mountain like that on Animal Jam, and the implementation of the game Falling Phantoms from the Lost Temple of Zios was very smart, considering the fact that it’s my second-favorite game on AJ, my first favorite being Best Dressed.
The lava crystals, although being repeated, are very fun, what with Graham’s spotbrights and the phantom battles interspersed with the puzzles. There are four of these, and four corks which are used to obtain them. I lost count of the number of corks in the rest of the adventure, but they’re not that difficult to find, given the linear layout of the adventure as opposed to the search-and-find approach of Return of the Phantoms and The Phantom Portal.
In one of the chambers, there’s a wolves only hatch that’s actually Greely’s study. I found his book titles very… interesting.
This adventure reminds me slightly of Diablo III, especially the pathway with the heated floor, which reminded me of the Chamber of Suffering in Act I. I have to admit the phantom sprouters get very annoying from time to time, but then again, that’s part of the fun.
This adventure is where I got my Gravatar picture. Greely… is… so… awesome. When he said he was going to stop the volcano and save us, I started freaking out. Greely was going to be a hero of the adventures, and I was pretty happy about it. Annabelle doesn’t like Greely that much, but he is my and Amber’s favorite, so we both took that very well.
The Phantom King fight is essentially the same as it was in the Hive, but with the added danger of falling phantoms. I really hate it when he summons his other little phantom friends. It’s so annoying.
Then the volcano started falling apart, and with the last conversation with Greely, I started freaking out again, but in a bad way. When we – we being me and Amber, who did it with me the first time – made it out of the volcano and it blew up with Greely inside, we were silent for a few seconds. Then we both started actually crying.
For those of you that think crying over a video game character is dumb, try crying over one you’d turned into your favorite character in your book.
I don’t really remember anything I’ve ever gotten from this adventure. It’s mostly stuff like those luminous mushrooms, though.

~The Search for Greely~
One of the most-played adventures Animal Jam has ever seen, aside from Return of the Phantoms and The Forgotten Desert. Playing on easy mode gets you items that can be seen in the adventure, such as Alpha wanted posters and phantom pods. Playing on hard mode gets phantom armor, which looks pretty slick on wolves. I don’t like the helmet very much, but the feet and tail are winners.
I like finding the combination lock in Greely’s study. It just feels so… Greely. As of yet I don’t have the combinations memorized, but I’ll get around to that as soon as possible. Or should I say ASAP?
SPOILER ALERT: I had put something very much like Greely’s phantom disguise machine in the AJ Story before this adventure even came out. For those of you who are wondering how long it took Greely to build it alone, Juniper Spiritbird helped him. Teehee…
So far, the phantoms only hatch and wolves only hatch have yielded only junk, mostly freedom hats and moon necklaces. I’ll keep trying, though.
There are five keys to find. Four of them have to be obtained by finding them through mazes of stuff. The fifth appears after killing the Phantom King… that is, Phantom Kings.
In my opinion, the easiest one to find is the top left, while the hardest is the bottom left. It usually takes me several tries to get the latter, but for hard mode, I’ve developed a strategy for those quick clickers. Get to the point so that there’s only one sweeper between you and the key, then die and click on the key as you’re teleporting to the spawnpoint. It’s tried and true and completely phantom-free.
When I did the adventure for the first time, Annabelle warned me that it was better for two people. I did it by myself anyway and then saw what she meant. Instead of fighting one Phantom King at the end, there’s two. I strongly recommend having a friend with you, especially on hard. One of you can take the Phantom Kings, and the other covers the phantoms. I do this with Amber a lot.
The best comes at the end: Phantom armor! It’s the first non-member armor set, and it’s one of the best-looking ones yet. Rabbits look hilarious in it; they look like little phantoms.
All credit goes to Amber on this one: while the phantom armor may appear to be arranged at random, there’s actually a pattern to it. Even though I have her original drawing, while Amber’s version was accurate, it wasn’t very… professional. So, instead of using that one, I made another one on Microsoft Paint. It’s tiny, so I’ll set it as the top image on the post.
Okay, it’s not great, but it works.
The rarest item I’ve ever got from this adventure, of course, is the phantom armor.

~The Forgotten Desert~
I always remember this adventure by the name Amber gave it: The Forgotten Dessert. She wasn’t joking, she actually thought it was going to be about cake. I just about died laughing.
This adventure is for eagles only and can be found by going to the bottom right of the screen from where you spawn. They’re across some water.
Since this adventure is inconsequential to the series, I won’t be posting my thoughts as much, but if you want to hear the full story, it’s at https://tweenfictiongirl.wordpress.com/2014/05/15/animal-jam-the-forgotten-desert/
There are 90 crystals to find, but it’s not as scary as it sounds. They can all be found in different ways. Here’s how you find the individual crystals:

Emeralds: The easiest to find. They are lying in plain sight around the desert. Some of them can be found in the water. There are 25 of these.
Topazes: These are a lot like the emeralds in the fact that they can be found everywhere, including in water, but instead of lying there, they are buried and only a sparkle every once in a while can be seen. There are 25 of these, too.
Sapphires: These can be found in mini-oasises scattered around the map. You water the dried patches, and it becomes lush and a sapphire appears. There are 20 of these.
Crystals: These are fairly hard to find. There are a handful of cacti in the game, and some have footprints on them. Stand on the footprints and a crystal will appear. There are 15 of these.
Amethysts: These are a pain in the neck. These can only be obtained when there are four eagles in an adventure. It takes a long time just to get one. There are a few stone archways in the desert. One has four pairs of footprints on it. When each eagle stands on them, an arrow appears. Continue following the arrows to the archways until an amethyst pops up. Then repeat. Thankfully, there are only 5 of these, but they’ll take up all of your time.

You get a prize every time you find all of one kind of gem. The rarest thing I’ve got from this adventure is… wait for it… a stinking rare beard. No kidding. The harder to get the gems, the rarer your prize. Common prizes for the crystals and amethysts are headdresses, beards, and spiked collars and wristbands of varying rarity.

~Bubble Trouble~
This adventure is the first underwater one! Find the valves to unlock the keys and free the dolphins. It’s pretty much like a big maze, except most of the passages are one-way. I don’t do this adventure much, but my advice to you is to check out every little corner. Oh, and there’s a dolphins-only hatch near the bottom left of the map. The rarest item I’ve ever got from this adventure is an underwater chest. Not that rare.

Stay tuned for the next adventure: the Phantom Fortress!

I know this is super long, but it just needed to be done. I hope this helped you out!!